Contact centers are used to contact individuals for different purposes, including for debt collection calls. As such, these debt collection calls may be regulated by various state and/or federal regulations, which govern how the debtors may be contacted. These regulations may proscribe not only how the debtor is contacted, but when the debtor may be contacted, and the number of attempts that may occur in attempting to contact the debtor during a time period. For example, the number of call attempts that may be made to a debtor may be regulated. Oregon, for example, allows a telephone call to a debtor's place of employment only if the debt collector in good faith has made an unsuccessful attempt to the debtor's residence during the day or during the evening between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Further, the debt collector may not contact the debtor at the debtor's place of employment more frequently than once each business week. There may be other state or federal regulations governing other aspects of how many calls may be attempted to a telephone number in various circumstances. Further, contact centers may have internal policies governing the number of call attempts that may be made.
It is evident that accurately tracking how many call attempts are made to a telephone number is important, since exceeding a limit may result in the debt collector liable for penalties, civil actions, or other adverse consequences. However, accurately tracking call attempts is not precisely defined by statute. Various technologies are available which allow a greater precision in determining how many call attempts actually occurred. Thus, improved approaches are needed for determining the number of call attempts to a telephone number for regulatory purposes. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.